run beyond all that can be imagined of the most exorbitant despotism, not stopping contented with the laws of Louis XIV., but dragging from the mould of ages the legislation even of Louis IX.

I shall draw a description of their freaks from a Parisian Journal before me,* which answers the question, How the Jesuits govern the Canton du Valais. The Grand Council of the Canton, under direction of Jesuit Priests, have adopted a law respecting illegal assemblies, and condemnable discussions and conversations, of which the first article runs as follows: Those who hold conversations tending to scandalize the Holy Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion, or contrary to good morals, shall be punished with a fine of from 20 to 200 francs, and imprisonment from a month to two years. Also those who introduce, affix, expose, lend, distribute, or keep secretly and without authorization, writings or bad books, or caricatures which attack directly or indirectly the Holy Religion of the State and its Ministers. The objects designated shall be confiscated, and in case of a second offence, the highest amount of fine and imprisonment shall be doubled. Blasphemers are to be punished according to the criminal laws.

Here are two classes of crime noted; scandalous and blasphemous conversations, and having bad books in your library. A Valaisan may chance to say that such or such a miracle published, by the Reverend Fathers, appears to him somewhat Apocryphal; the opinion is scandalous against the Holy Catholic, Apostolic and Romish religion, and he shall undergo fine and imprisonment for his enormous crime. He dares to pretend that certain priests do not set the best possible example; the opinion is thrice scandalous, for which he shall suffer the highest amount of fine and imprisonment. He goes even a little further; possibly he discusses the claim of the Virgin Mary to the adoration of the faithful, and maintains that on this point the Romish Church is contrary to the New Testament. This is worse than a mere scandalous opinion or proposition; it is blasphemy; and blasphemy is a crime for criminal law to punish. If the hardy

*The Semeur.

pos

Valaisan shall dare affirm that the morality of the Jesuits is sibly very immoral, this is blasphemy in the first degree, and must be punished with the highest infamy.

It is almost incredible that a law of this nature can have been promulgated in 1845, upon the frontiers of France and Italy, under notice of the public press, when the Jesuits have so many reasons for making men believe that their system is not incompatible with some degree of liberty. But it is a fair experiment fully played out. It would scarcely have been believed that they would have dared offer to Europe a spectacle of such drunkenness of despotism. In France, the people were full of indignation against the law of sacrilege in that nation, and after the Revolution of July, they utterly abolished it. But that law, in comparison with this of the Canton du Valais, concerning scandalous opinions and propositions, was sweetness and benevolence itself. It was necessary at least to have actually committed the offence in some place of worship, during the religious exercises, or to have directly attacked some minister of the church. But in the Canton du Valais it is enough to have simply expressed a scandalous opinion, in the street, or the tavern, or in one's own house in presence of a neighbor! Did the Inquisition ever go farther

than this?

We should have thought that the laws of the eleventh century commanding to pierce the tongues of blasphemers and heretics. with a hot iron, existed now only in history, as monuments of an atrocious barbarity. But it is a great mistake. The Jesuits suffer nothing of cruelty and infamy to perish. They keep it concealed for a season; they shut up their arsenal when the popular storm thunders; but so soon as the sun shines, they bring up again their chains, their pitiless axes and instruments of torture.

Again by this law men shall be fined and imprisoned, not only for having written bad books, or drawn wicked caricatures against the holy religion of the State, not only for having introduced into the Canton, or exposed, or distributed, or lent, such books or writings, but even for having knowingly or without authorization kept them in their libraries. An inhabitant of the Valais, for example, has among his books the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, or even the new writings proscribed in the Index

of the Romish Congregation, such as the books of Guizot, Cousin, Dupin, Jouffroy, Thierry, in a word, whatever work may have been published in France for half a century, except the nauseous productions of the Jesuitical school. Well! the bare fact of having kept these volumes constitutes a crime, unless the authorization of the Company of Ignatius shall have been obtained, a thing which cannot be, except for its most devoted creatures. Certainly, this is new, original, unheard of. We have heard of certain ordinances of our ancient kings punishing the readers of a bad book, after having condemned the author; but we never heard of a law pronouncing a universal sentence against the proprietors and keepers of works contrary to the Holy Catholic, Apostolic and Romish religion.

But how can the law be executed? Will they make domiciliary visits, to examine, one after another, the books belonging to each individual? Will they ferret for them in the secret corners of the household, in order to be sure that the proscribed writings are not shut up in some hiding-place? When a poor inhabitant of the Canton comes under the suspicions of the Clergy because he has not regularly kept the fasts, nor taken his note of confession at canonical times, will they break open his bureaus, his furniture, to discover the unhappy volumes, which have inspired him with such infidelity? We should not be at all surprised at this. Where there is a will, there is a way. If they would not shrink from publishing such a monstrous law, neither will they quail before the measure necessary to carry it into execution. It will be a permanent inquisition, which will always possess the means of oppressing and breaking down those who will not humbly bow beneath its yoke of bondage.

Talk to us after this of the generous principles of the Jesuits and the Romish Priests! Tell us, ye propagandists of the Romish faith, your love of liberty! Tell us for the millionth time that you, and you only, know how to respect the rights of the people and the progress of humanity! Pretend your loving democracy in your sermons and your journals! Go to, we know you of old, and soon there will not be a reasonable man in the world, who will not discover under your mask the deep imprints of your insatiable instinct of tyranny! If there were the least

particle of sincerity in your liberal maxims and pretences, you would at least express your indignation against such monstrous laws promulgated in the Canton du Valais; you would attack these abominable enterprises of the Jesuits; but what one of your journals is there, that would have the frankness and sincerity to do this? Every Ecclesiastical Gazette is silent, and yet to-morrow these same despotic journals will dare tell their adversaries that they are the enemies of liberty.

Comedians, comedians! the execrable farce you are playing will have to be finished, and then beware of the conclusion!

This is an energetic strain of criticism, appeal, and invective, before which, if there be much of it, such detestable measures cannot stand. The Jesuits are the Mamelukes of the Romish Church; neither king nor people can be independent or free where such a body of tyrants, the worse for being secret, bear sway. Note the expression directly or indirectly in the law against writings and propositions tending to bring into disrepute the Holy Romish religion of State. What traps and caverns of tyranny are here! What room for more than inquisitorial acuteness and cruelty, in searching out and detecting the indirect tendencies of publications, which the Priests see fit to proscribe. The most innocent writing may thus be made the ground of a severe imprisonment; and as to all investigation or discussion of the truth, it becomes impossible.

But we have pleasanter footsteps to follow than those of the Jesuits; so farewell to their trail for the present. We shall meet them again in Switzerland.

CHAPTER IV.

Physical plagues of the Canton du Valais and of Switzerland. Hospital for the Cretins.

APPROACHING Sion from Martigny the view is exceedingly picturesque and romantic, by reason of several extensive old castles on successive craggy peaks, that rise in commanding grandeur, like the Acropolis at Athens, and seem, as you advance upwards, to fill the whole valley. One of the highest summits is crowned with a church or convent, a most imposing object, seen against the sky long before you arrive at the base of the village. The view from this church in every direction, or from the crags on which it is perched, is so extensive, so rich, and so picturesque, as abundantly to recompense even a tired traveller for the toil of the ascent. Besides, there is on this hill an exceedingly aged old rocky edifice of worship, that looks as if it might have existed before the Roman Catholic Church itself began to have a being. Of the village below, wooden shoes and woollen stockings seemed to be the staple commodity, while a knot of industrious women, washing clothes around the fountain in the centre of the street, were, when we passed, the most striking object in view.

Age, disease, uncleanly cottages, hard labor, penury, scanty and unwholesome food, will transform beauty into ugliness, anywhere in the world, even under the most delicious climate. What a change! Could any being, unacquainted with the progress of our race from elastic youth to that colorless, toothless time, when the grasshopper is a burden, believe that these forms, which seem now a company of the personified genii of wrinkles, were once as fair as the Virgin Mother of their invocations? They may have been. Youth itself is beauty, and the most secret, black, and midnight hags were once young. But Shakspeare need not have gone upon the Continent, nor Wordsworth among the fishwomen of Calais, to find good types of witches. I think I have